Saturday, January 21, 2012

Why were the site owners of Megaupload really arrested?

It has been reported on the news that Megaupload, an internet company based in Hong Kong, and founded by Kim Schmitz, have had their executives arrested in New Zealand and their site shut down after the FBI, the US Department of Justice and the Motion Picture Association of America sought and obtained arrest warrants for them. Now, having published myself*, I would not like the idea that someone could read our novel without royalties being given to me for my work in writing it, so why am I complaining about Megaupload being arrested? Well, as usual, it is not as straight forward as it first seems. Are they committing a criminal offence by allowing their site to be used for copyright piracy; yes they are. Have they made loads and loads of money from this site; yes they have. The last sentence is the real raison d'etre behind this shutting of their site. The same big companies that are backing the stance of the FBI & the US Department of Justice are the same companies that have been doing illegal file sharing for years. What they don't want is someone, not of their kind, taking the advertising revenues for those piracy sites which they don't own and/or control: see this. It is hypocrisy at its worst backed up by legislative bodies in the USA with the rest of the world kow towing to their wants.

* 'The Frustrations of Venus and Mars' by Ged Mitchell & Nadia Baranowa. Do not buy it as I have had an argument with the publisher over the price. I think it is far too expensive for what you get. If I thought that I could get away with it I would put the story online for free just to stick two fingers up to them and swallow the money that I have laid out for it. I am currently looking into the legalities of having it published/printed in Poland.

I tend to agree with you. I think I can place the moment when the USA turned from a democratic country into a fascist state; it wasn't even that democratic before that, in reality. The moment when everything changed was the assassination of JF Kennedy. When his brother Bobby said he was going to dismantle the CIA he had signed the death warrant of him and his brother. Shame, really, because I liked them both, from what little memory I have of them and the subsequent reading about them.